… comes an abstract, of course.
June was a pretty lean month for me, photo-wise, and my choice for abstracts was minimal. What we’re seeing here is the first flower blossoms from one of my pond plants, known as a lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus.) The plants had gone in a couple of years ago and always did well, but this year they surpassed themselves, making a desperate attempt to get out of the pot and take over the entire pond – most of the water is shaded by their large leaves right now. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing, because the frogs are quite happy with this and I’ve had at least two separate broods of tadpoles rear themselves within – I’ll probably have a few photos of them coming along shortly.
Those webs that can be seen stretched across so many of the blossoms, if you look close, are quite small, and I couldn’t tell you what made them – I may not have even been able to see the culprit had it been right in front of me, since the entire spike of flowers was perhaps 16cm in length and not 2 wide. But that’s not really a good way to express the scale, so here’s a photo that works much better:
Yes, that’s a mosquito, and it’s even possible that you’re seeing my blood swelling that abdomen. We do treat the pond (and rainbarrels) with mosquito bombs to halt the growth of larva, but that doesn’t prevent the adults from finding the water sources and attempting to lay eggs anyway.